Shehri, the second man in the ranks of Al-Qaeda Organization in the Arabian Peninsula and whose wife, Umm Yousef, was part of plans organized with Prince Muhammad Bin Naif to bring back Abdullah Asiri to the Kingdom, has spoken of his son's flight to Yemen to join up with the terrorist organization. “My son accused me of being an infidel before he left for Yemen. He breached agreements with the state which paid for his marriage and secured his future, which he has now thrown away by following the path of the deviant groups,” Ali Bin Jaber Al-Shehri said. Al-Shehri's fourth son Saeed was brought back by the Kingdom's government from Guantanamo in Cuba after he was arrested in Afghanistan. At 15 years old, he was the youngest prisoner at the US detention center. Following his return, Saeed lived a “happy and stable life in Al-Namas”, according to his father, but suddenly, a month before the Ministry of Interior made public the names of 85 persons wanted in connection with acts of terrorism, he disappeared. “About a week after his wife had given birth to a girl we lost contact with them, but shortly after his wife called to say she was in Riyadh and that Saeed had gone to Yemen,” Ali said. That shock was compounded two months later by the news that Umm Yousef and her three children had also left to join up with Saeed. According to his father, Saeed's brother Yousef, who was 16 when he was detained in Afghanistan in November 2001 and was taken to Guantanamo two months later, is leading a new life after his marriage in prison and is completing his secondary school education which was disrupted by his trip to Afghanistan. “Yousef is a bit of an introvert and prefers to only have contact with the limited members of the family,” Ali said. My daughter was ‘kidnapped' The father of Saeed Al-Shehri's wife Wafa, or “Umm Yousef” after her first son, meanwhile, has said his daughter was forced into going to Yemen, describing her departure as resembling a kidnapping. In a confused narration of events chronologically at odds with Ali Al-Shehri's version in which Wafa left for Yemen after her husband Saeed, Mohammed Al-Jubeiri told Okaz newspaper: “She called me the day after she disappeared saying her husband Saeed had gone to Riyadh on his own, and she was all alone in the house with her two-week-old baby, as her mother and grandmother had gone to hospital, while her husband was waiting for the house to be empty,” Al-Jubeiri told Okaz. “Her husband told her to get a car and the children, and then they left with him and went to Yemen. He let her call me and her mother and she was crying, saying that they were in a very remote area a long way away from anybody,” Al-Jubeiri said. “She told me she had had to walk 10km across mountains from where Saeed and his companions were to make the telephone call.” According to her father, Wafa said: “I want to come home, but I'm at a remote place and it's difficult, given that the children are with me.” Al-Qaeda ‘games' Reports that she worked for Al-Qaeda under the alias “Umm Hajir Al-Azdi”, he said, were “part of the games that Al-Qaeda played to exploit the media, to make people think she'd gone to help and follow the deviant group. It's all falsehood and trickery.” Renewed interest in Saeed Al-Shehri and his wife and the three children has been provoked by their appearance as subject matter in the telephone conversation Prince Muhammad Bin Naif held with his would-be killer Abdullah Asiri published following last Thursday's failed suicide attack. “First you will see your family. Second, the woman and her children will return safely. It is because women, for us, come first in everything,” Prince Muhammad told Asiri, in reference to Wafa and her children. “If I had to choose between you and the woman, I would tell you all to stay there and let her come,” the Prince said, to which Asiri replied: “It is true. If you could see his little daughter and how Yousef is… I hope all goes well.” That part of the conversation, published in its entirety in Saudi Gazette Wednesday, touched a chord with members of the families involved, Al-Jubeiri among them. “Unbelievable efforts are being made by officials to get Wafa back, the clearest evidence being Prince Muhammad's conversation with the suicide bomber which showed how much attention he is dedicating to Wafa and her children,” he said. Al-Jubeiri said he was persuaded to marry his daughter to Saeed Al-Shehri by his son Yousef who said he was an “upright man” but that he “needed containing through marriage” to make sure he didn't return to his former ideas. “In the end I agreed to the marriage, hoping that he would change,” Al-Jubeiri said. Al-Jubeiri believes his son Yousef also wants a return to the Kingdom. “He called me last month saying he wants to come back and hand himself in, but it's obvious there are forces preventing him,” he said. Al-Jubeiri's grandson, Abdullah, is also on the list of wanted terrorists.
